"The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant said on Monday that contaminated ground water had likely been flowing into the sea, acknowledging such a leakage for the first time."
"Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, made the announcement a day after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pro-nuclear Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner scored a decisive victory in elections to the upper house, cementing his grip on power.
The head of Japan's new Nuclear Regulation Authority, created since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami wrecked Fukushima, said this month he believed contamination of the sea had been continuing since the accident.
But Tepco had previously failed to confirm the ground water leakage more than two years after the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986."
Kiyoshi Takenaka reports for Reuters July 23, 2013.
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